I recently pulled my O2 off the shelf and took it into my DC office so I can put it to use sometimes (inspired by that kid that's doing the 3-part SGI video now on YT).

So I get it in and there's a CD in the drive but I can't eject it. I finally get it working, but the door keeps opening as soon as I shut it. OVER AND OVER AGAIN. During reboot, after OS is up, etc. Seems drive itself is broken physically. So I held it shut thru one cycle and now it wont open, but it makes open closing noise. So, it's done.

BUT.

Now the SGI acts as if something is slowing it down by a factor of 5-10. Everything. After many reboots, also.

At boot there is a CD device not ready error now -- 2 of them at start. Could it be that the broken CD drive is somehow slowing the system by doing something odd to the SCSI subsystem or some such? Presumably disconnecting it would solve if so -- but wanted to ask if this is a known thing.

The door problem is caused by the failure of a plastic part in the drive. It seems every O2 eventually develops this problem. Even my O2 does this. If I shove the tray in with moderate force, it usually stays shut.

Also try the eject and inject commands found on later versions of IRIX 6.5

blakespot wrote:I recently pulled my O2 off the shelf and took it into my DC office so I can put it to use sometimes...{snip}...Now the SGI acts as if something is slowing it down by a factor of 5-10. Everything. After many reboots, also.

Did you update the network settings to work with the DC office network? In my experience, 90% of the time an IRIX machine is dramatically slower than expected, it's because the network settings (especially DNS) are incorrectly configured or it is trying to mount an NFS share listed in /etc/fstab that is not accessible on the net.

Krokodil wrote:The door problem is caused by the failure of a plastic part in the drive. It seems every O2 eventually develops this problem.

So the problem is in the drive itself? Not it the added plastic parts (the blue one) or so? I noticed that the drive opens randomly, too. But only if there is no CD loaded.

For the Blakespot's machine I would suggest to disconnect the drive it there are SCSI errors.

Yeah, it's inside the drive. More on that from sgistuff.net

CD-ROM Failure

What to do when the drive tray is stuck / won't work.

The CD-ROM drive used in O2 systems is a drive made by Toshiba. A common point of failure for these devices is a gear in the mechanism that opens/closes a tray. If the gear is pushed from the motor shaft it has to be installed on the CD-ROM door will refuse to open or will not close.

To fix the problem the O2 has to be disassembled so far that the CD-ROM drive can be removed. The top cover of the CD-ROM drive also has to be removed and the small -usually white- gear has to be placed back on the empty motor shaft.

blakespot wrote:I recently pulled my O2 off the shelf and took it into my DC office so I can put it to use sometimes...{snip}...Now the SGI acts as if something is slowing it down by a factor of 5-10. Everything. After many reboots, also.

Did you update the network settings to work with the DC office network? In my experience, 90% of the time an IRIX machine is dramatically slower than expected, it's because the network settings (especially DNS) are incorrectly configured or it is trying to mount an NFS share listed in /etc/fstab that is not accessible on the net.

Ahh, it was fast and fine when I first booted it up in the office because I was pointing at my old home IP address, so networking failed right out. More recently I configured things following a forum post to get DHCP working, and I get connectivity (can telnet to my office Mac's IP for instance) but DNS lookups aren't working. This is about the time it slowed down. And yes --- it is trying to connect to an NFS share I had setup at home, that it isn't going to be able to connect to. That's be it. I disable this in fstab?

blakespot wrote:Ahh, it was fast and fine when I first booted it up in the office because I was pointing at my old home IP address, so networking failed right out. More recently I configured things following a forum post to get DHCP working, and I get connectivity (can telnet to my office Mac's IP for instance) but DNS lookups aren't working. This is about the time it slowed down. And yes --- it is trying to connect to an NFS share I had setup at home, that it isn't going to be able to connect to. That's be it. I disable this in fstab?

Yep. Just comment out the problematic NFS entry in fstab by adding a # to the beginning of the line. (I always recommend making a backup copy of /etc/fstab before editing it.)

I came in this morning and fired up the O2 and I hear it chime and the LED is green, but the 1600SW is dark. It's LED went from amber to green and is remaining green, and the panel is clearly lit (but "black"), but there's nothing on the screen. I've verified the cable connection. I disconnected Ethernet fwiw.

So there are deeper problems, unrelated it would seem, with this O2, sadly.

Any ideas? Is there a magic diagnostic key sequence at boot? Thanks...

Once it's up, start your network settings again (via System manger), giving everything fresh entries and then modify for your gateway. reboot in between these two stages.Check your hosts, DNS settings. it looks like a machine has your IP address or, as I have found in the past there is a name/IP conflict with an earlier entry on the same machine.Clear out you /etc/fstab also, except obviously the top line which should be the local system drive.

it's going to continue to be slow until you either get it on the network configured well enough to use DNS, or change nsswitch.conf from "hosts: dns files" to "hosts:files dns". I recommend fixing nsswitch.conf.